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Paddling and Teaching CPR on the Mekong and Srepok Rivers

By Garrett Cooper

Last December and January, Matt Smith and I paddled a Pakboats PakCanoe 170 nearly 600 miles down the Srepok and Mekong Rivers through Cambodia and Vietnam. Along the way we stopped in several villages to teach CPR as well as abdominal thrusts to treat choking victims.

I have been meaning to send you this quick note for some time now. Back in 2001 I contacted you under the auspices of our guiding company with a request for information on purchasing some of your Pakboat folding canoes for expanding our offerings into combined water and mountain trips. You kindly offered a wholesale rate on a boat to evaluate it for our proposed program. “9-11” put a big crimp into tourism activities here in Alaska as well as many of our international offerings, so I dropped the idea for a while.

I was personally intrigued with the concept of a folding white-water able canoe, though, and I started doing personal trips with the PakCanoe 15 bought from you. Even though we never went anywhere with the concept of combined water and mountain trips with our company, I have gotten a great deal of use personally with the boat, and I credit you and your company with opening up the possibilities of numerous amazing trips here in Alaska and in Canada. I have paddled the boat a great deal with two people rather than a single, and it is a bit small, but it still has performed flawlessly for over 12 years of flying in bush planes, cargo in boats, and packing in the back of a car to and from numerous wilderness river and lake trips.

I want to thank you for a very well made product and excellent customer service when I had contact with you and your company earlier. The combination of light weight, portability, and durability of your boats has been very impressive!

Our company weathered the lean travel times in the aftermath of “9-11” just fine, and has gone on to become the largest mountaineering guide service in North America. I still have fond ideas about combined water/mountain trips, so perhaps sometime in the future. . .

Many years ago, a group of friends bought canoes, picked a route on the map and went on an epic trip. None of us had been on a canoe trip before, and none of us knew how to paddle a canoe in whitewater, but we had a good time and I was hooked on canoe trips. Through pure luck, our route turned out to be one of the finest canoe touring routes in all of Lapland.

We get some rather unusual e-mail from customers, and this one sure qualifies. I have never seen anything like it, and I am amazed that there is no damage to the canoe!

Hi Alv,I am sending you a picture of the grizzly bear tracks on our Pakboat from the Thelon River trip. I want to thank you again for making a great boat and we are using it this year again in Woodland Caribou Park in Ontario. We are also telling everybody what a great boat you make.THANKS,Don Baumgartner

Last Updated on Wednesday, 27 March 2013 16:37

Pack a Canoe for a First Descent

Friday, 01 February 2013 15:17

Canoeing the Lorillard River

By Brian Johnston

I am a Far North paddler. I travel with others that share my passion for exploring this vast region of Canada. As we continue to chase our dreams and follow our passions, we will continue to research, paddle, and report on original and unique water routes. This is one such trip report.

The buttress roots of rainforest giants reach right down into the scarcely-moving greenish water and a ‘vee’ ripple spreads away from the front of the canoe as we paddle gently forwards, taking care not to make any noise that would scare away the maroon and orange ball of fur that is

My PakCanoe is a boat that can get you just about anywhere. You can carry it dismantled in a couple of rucksack loads over mountains and through forests, then reassemble it when you get to a river's headwaters. You can get to places where few, if any, people have traveled before; as I've done on jungle expeditions in Brazil and Bolivia several times in the past few years. This time, I'm off to Siberia.

The plan was to get to- and cross- Lake Rogo-Aguardo, the legendary centre of the Moxos civilisation of Bolivia’s lowlands who had kept first Inca then Spanish invaders at bay. Rogo-Aguardo has always been a hard place to get to.

In Canada, a country known for it's numerous rivers and waterways, the North Saskatchewan river stands out as a premier route. It runs for more than 1200 km (750 miles) from the Rocky Mountains eastward across the prairies to it's joining with the South Saskatchewan river.